In the article of September I wrote that I think mindset is the biggest issue we have to overcome to change towards a circular economy. Thereby I mean changing from seeing the importance towards freeing time to make a change in your daily work. We are all busy keeping up with our duties that it is an extra effort to stop, reflect and act.

I am writing blog articles since January 2012. Cradle-to-cradle was the main subject, focussed on which materials and techniques make textile products suitable for biodegradation or recycling. Ones in a while it is good to take a broader view and see the shifts that are needed to make a circular economy possible, that is what I will do in this article.
Why a circular economy? Take a look at this (Dutch) video:

Habits...doing things in a particular way for so long that we forget to consider the possibility that something can be done differently. I think washing textiles at home is such a topic.For consumers it is common to wash textiles with water and soap and occasionally dry-cleaning (with perc, a carcinogenic substance) or steaming. Why are textiles washed? To eliminate stains and odour. And even if these are not present the textiles are washed just to give the idea of cleanliness. I wrote an blog article in 2012 about this topic.

Washing with hot water and soap in a machine is harmful for the environment:

It costs energy to heat up the water

It costs water

Soap goes down the drain and not all soaps are fully biodegradable or friendly to the aquatic environment, they might cause oxygen levels to drop which makes it hard (or impossible) for aquatic living creatures to survive.

And washing in a machine is not only harmful for the environment, it damages your textiles as well, because textiles rub and spin around each other.

How do we get clean textiles?

Yes, you read it correctly: I changed the terminology, I am not talking about “ washing” because the end purpose is clean clothes and there are multiple ways to do this without water.

First of all: it is time to change the perception of “cleanliness”

​Is the item really dirty? Feel it, smell it, look at it...

Maybe it is enough to remove the odour by letting it hang a few days outside?

Is it needed to clean the whole item? Or is it possible to clean the stains only?

Techniques to clean textilesUse different materials: wool can be easily aired or steamed. Or nano-enhanced textiles. (‘nano’ means really tiny. At the moment researchers don’t know much the effects of nano-materials on human and nature. Because the particles are so small they could enter our skin. This can be good (biodegradable materials that heal the body for example) but we do not know the long term effects of ﻿e.g. silver entering the body.﻿

CO2 to clean textiles
CO2 is a useful substance, I did a project about dyeing with CO2 instead of water and an article about removing dye.

Ultrasonic technologyFor this technology you do need water, but no detergent, rubbing or spinning anymore.

I experimented with 3D printing on textiles, to see how this change in flexibility could effect the material and how we could make prints biodegradable.

A few pros and cons of 3D printing for a circular economy

Pros

Less transportation of goods, printing on location is possible

Small minimum amounts, unique products

No waste, you only use the amount of material that is needed for the product

A lot of material options, even post-consumer plastic melted into 3D material.

Cons

Expensive for large productions as it costs a lot of time

Creation of a lot of gadgets: might become waste quickly because these gadgets probably get out of fashion soon

Not all materials have good qualities yet

3D printed garmentsIn combination with a 3D bodyscan machine, clothing can be made directly in 3D instead of making a 3D shape (human body) in a 2D shape (pattern) to make it into a 3D shape (garment) again.However it is currently difficult to create the same look and feel that textiles have in 3D. There are options as you can see:

Electroloom 3D printing with fibres

Marijke Timmermans & Theresia Grevinga

Flexible 3D print materials, like TPU from Kinematics

Which products could you make?There are so many possibilities, but for a fashion designer it could be interesting to make buttons and other interlocking systems with a 3D printer or whole garments, as could make it easy for disassembly. An interesting method is 3D printing velcro tape “hairs”​Like to try it? With the free program SketchUp and a FabLab you can start right away!

​You can also change the flexibility of textiles when you print on it. This makes it possible to make more rigid parts that are stronger combined with the flexible textile parts.

​Or use 3D printing as a way to add decoration to your textiles.

MaterialsTo make 3D printing suitable for the circular economy you have to consider the biodegradability or recyclability of the material. Fusing different materials together might make it hard to recycle or biodegrade them.

Biodegradable materials that can be printed are for example PLA, Wood, bamboo, cork, chocolate, algae. When these are printed on biodegradable materials like organic cotton, linen, tencel, the full material can biodegrade. These materials are sometimes also recycable, for instance you can melt the chocolate and reuse it.

Recycable, not biodegradable, materials that can be printed are for example plastics, gold, silver, aluminum.

Return the productWhen a user does not want to use the product anymore, in a circular economy they could return the item to you and you can recycle the material. With plastic this can for example be done with the Filabot.

Maybe rent out your products so you get the valuable material back ones the user is done with it?

There is a difference between clothes and fashion. Clothes are the items we wear on our body, fashion (for me) is the moment in time where specific items are popular. This can be clothes, but also accessories, interior items, basically all products or even ways of behaving (like vegetable gardening) ​

In November I gave a Masterclass in Scotland for the Zero Waste Scotland program. Therefore I made a scheme that shows different routes of materials. I would like to share this with you. I defined three steps in the material loop: resource, biodegradability and recyclability.

A designer's dilemma:Use the toxic substance that requires less energy or the nontoxic one that requires much more energy? [...] it is much easier to employ renewable energy in creating a product than it is to detoxify what has been toxified. [1]

A few months ago I found something fascinating in the field of materials. Programmable materials. Materials that can assemble themselves in the right conditions. How can you apply these materials in an eco-effective design?